Authors Sue Anthropic: AI Piracy & Copyright Infringement

Over 100 authors are suing Anthropic for 75 million dollars. They claim the company pirated their copyrighted books to train its Claude AI chatbot. The authors allege Anthropic scraped thousands of copyrighted works from illegal "shadow libraries." They say the company used these to feed its AI data engine. This includes known illegal file-sharing hubs like Library Genesis and Books3. Anthropic reportedly skipped paying licensing fees or asking for permission. Instead, it relied on illegal data aggregates, like "The Pile," to accelerate Claude’s ability to mimic human writing. This legal action follows an earlier lawsuit from August 2024. A landmark ruling in June 2025 found that while training AI on legally purchased material is fair, using stolen copies is illegal. That court ordered Anthropic to pay a 1.5 billion dollar settlement for copying about 7 million pirated books. The plaintiffs in this new lawsuit opted out of the previous settlement and are seeking more money per complainant. Anthropic has not publicly responded to this specific filing. This situation highlights the ongoing debate about intellectual property and AI training.